Resetting the Table

Eve PosenLeave a comment

This is the sermon I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Kol Nidre, September 20, 2026.

There is a strange thing that happens when we disagree with someone. The longer we go without actually talking to them, the more certain we become that we know exactly what they think.

We know why they made that decision. We know what they really meant in that email. We know what they care about. We know what they don’t care about. We know what they would say if we bothered to ask them, so eventually we stop bothering to ask. And somehow, the person with whom we disagree becomes the person we understand least and are most certain we understand completely. 

I don’t think this is just a synagogue problem. It is everywhere. We choose news sources, social media feeds, neighborhoods, and sometimes friendships that make it increasingly possible to avoid people who see the world differently than we do. We have built echo chambers so effective that we can go through much of our lives without seriously engaging a different opinion. 

And when we do encounter one, we often choose one of two responses. We don’t talk at all, or we retreat behind a screen and let our keyboards become our culture warriors. It’s almost as if every part of the country has developed its own political eruv, and you can carry almost anything inside it except a different opinion. And the most painful part – when the invitation to have a conversation is met with a brick wall: NO. I won’t do that.

I am not going to change the culture of our country from this bimah. But we can change the culture of our community. And I’ll be honest: a place where we cannot have reasonable conflict, talk through disagreement, and remain in relationship is not a synagogue I’d want to lead. 

So there are four words I have said a lot this year: “Come talk to me.” 

Come sit down. Let’s have coffee. Let’s actually talk it through. Not because I expect you to agree with me. Not because I think an hour together will magically convince you that I am right. But because something happens when we sit across from another human being that cannot happen in an email, a Facebook comment, a petition, a hallway complaint, or a conversation about someone instead of with them. 

We encounter a person across the table. And somewhere along the way, we have begun to believe that disagreement releases us from the obligation of relationship. We decide what someone believes before asking. We assume we understand their motives. Sometimes we talk about them with everyone except them. 

Perhaps that’s why Yom Kippur asks us to stop. For twenty-five hours, Judaism takes away our usual escape routes. We stop eating. We stop working. We stop rushing. We stop responding and reacting. And we come here, together, to tell the truth. Not the kind of truth that wins an argument. The kind of truth that might repair a life. 

With Yom Kippur being this great reset of the Jewish year, it’s easy to think it’s just a personal reset. It’s also an opportunity to reset the way we are willing to be with one another. 

There’s an organization I have spent time learning from called Resetting the Table. Their work helps communities navigate deep disagreement, especially when the issues touch our identities, values, fears, and commitments. Their goal is not agreement. Instead, they ask whether we can slow conflict down enough to understand what is actually happening between us. Can we become curious about what’s behind another person’s position? Can we name our differences without turning one another into caricatures? Can we disagree without surrendering relationship? 

Judaism has been asking that question for thousands of years. Pirkei Avot teaches, “Kol machloket shehi l’shem shamayim, sofah l’hitkayem.” Every disagreement that is for the sake of Heaven will endure. Notice what it does not say. It does not say the disagreement will be resolved. It does not say eventually one side will realize the other was right. It says, sofah l’hitkayem. It can endure. 

Our tradition imagines people remaining profoundly divided while our relationships remain intact. It imagines a community strong enough to contain competing opinions, fears, and priorities without requiring that one voice disappear. We have become very good at declaring what we believe. We are less practiced at remaining in relationship with someone who believes differently. 

There are, of course, beliefs and behaviors that require boundaries. Judaism doesn’t demand that we remain in relationship with someone who seeks our harm. But discomfort is not danger, as you may recall from my Yom Kippur sermon last year. Disagreement is not betrayal. Being challenged is not the same thing as being attacked. If everyone who disappoints us becomes someone with whom we will no longer speak, eventually our tables become very small indeed. 

The Talmud offers another model in Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai. They argued about nearly everything. Yet Eruvin 13b teaches that Beit Hillel were nochin va’aluvin, kind and humble, and that they studied both their own opinions and those of Beit Shammai. In fact, they taught Beit Shammai’s position before teaching their own. 

Think about what that requires. Before defending your position, understand someone else’s well enough to articulate it accurately. To say: I have heard you. I understand what matters to you. And now I will tell you why I disagree. 

Imagine if that were our standard. Listening is not capitulation. Curiosity is not weakness. Understanding another person’s argument does not require abandoning your own. We can disagree fiercely without surrendering our convictions or one another’s humanity. 

This is where Yom Kippur becomes more than a metaphor. The Mishnah teaches that Yom Kippur atones for transgressions between a person and God. But for transgressions bein adam l’chavero, between one person and another, Yom Kippur does not atone until we have sought reconciliation. You can fast for twenty-five hours. You can beat your chest through every Al Chet. You can stand here until the gates close tomorrow night. And still, there are things God cannot repair for us. Because some repair requires another human being. 

Our cheshbon hanefesh, our accounting of the soul, must include the relationships we have abandoned because disagreement became too difficult. Whom have I stopped being curious about? Whose motives have I decided I already understand? Whom do I talk about more than I talk to? Whom have I reduced to a position? The conservative. The progressive. The Zionist. The anti-Zionist. The leader. The critic. Once I have assigned the label, I no longer have to encounter the person. But Judaism insists that the person is the entire point of the encounter. 

We teach that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. It’s a beautiful teaching. You could also make the case that it’s one of the most challenging. Why? Because it’s every human, not some humans. It doesn’t allow us the comfort of labels. 

So how do we begin? Resetting the Table teaches practices that are deceptively simple. First, slow it down. When conflict escalates, our instinct is to speed up. To respond or correct or defend. Teshuvah asks us to interrupt that instinct. 

Then, ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish. There are arguments worth winning and principles you shouldn’t surrender, but be careful of winning the point and losing the person. 

Next, ask before assuming. “Help me understand how you got there.” “What feels most important to you?” “What are you worried will happen?” Listen long enough that you could tell their story back to them. Can you describe their position in a way they would recognize as their own? If not, you probably are not ready to respond. 

And then name the difference. “I hear you, and here is where I see it differently.” We may leave still disagreeing. That’s allowed. Sometimes that’s what success looks like. We spoke honestly. We listened seriously. But we disagreed. And still, we stayed at the table. 

Stay at the table as long as you can. We cannot reset a table we refuse to approach. The culture of a community is built in moments exactly like these, in the choice to go toward one another rather than away. 

So my charge this Yom Kippur is simple. Think of one person you have stopped being curious about. Someone you have stopped wondering about. Someone you think you already understand. 

And ask yourself one question: What might I not know? Not, “How am I wrong?” You might not be. Not, “How can I agree with them?” You might never. What might I not know? What experience brought them here? What are they afraid of losing? What do they believe they are protecting? And what do I wish they understood about me? 

Then, if it is possible, go to the table. Come with conviction. Come with your anger. Come with your fear. Come with your history and your hurt and your questions. Come knowing that you may leave believing exactly what you believed when you arrived. But come. Sit down. Slow it down. Ask one more question. Listen for the story underneath the position. Say what you believe without denying the humanity of the person across from you. Perhaps the table will not solve our disagreement. Perhaps it will do something more important. It will keep us in relationship. 

The Book of Life is not a book filled with people who agree with us. It is filled with people. Complicated people. Frustrating people. Frightened people. People carrying stories we do not know and wounds we cannot see. People who will disappoint us and people whom we will inevitably disappoint. People created, every one of them, b’tzelem Elohim. 

This year, may we have the courage to meet them at the table. May we have the humility to listen before we assume, the strength to speak honestly without cruelty, and the wisdom to know that disagreement does not have to mean disconnection. And may we remember that sometimes the most sacred words we can offer another human being are not “I agree with you,” but simply: 

Come. Sit down. Let’s talk.

Shabbat is Resistance

Eve Posen1 Comment

This is the sermon I delivered on Rosh Hashanah at Congregation Neveh Shalom on September 12, 2026.

Last month, something monumental happened in Oakland, California, and I’m guessing you heard about it. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, was being sued by a consortium of states. At the end of August, Meta agreed to a settlement of $17 billion. That may sound like a lot of money. It’s not. Last quarter alone, Meta made a net profit of $16 billion. But it’s enough to send a message, and enough for Meta to make some changes to how their social media platforms operate. 

Without getting too much into the weeds, the states alleged that Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to children, knew the risks those platforms posed, and hid that information from the public. Meta denied the allegations, but as part of the settlement, agreed to changes including time limits and nighttime blocks for minors. In other words, the company is forcing its customers to stop, because apparently we aren’t very good at doing that ourselves. We’ll come back to this. 

I’ve spent a lot of my life in services, both pre- and post-ordination. Between the sermons I’ve heard and the ones I’ve delivered, they probably number in the thousands. There are two that have really stuck with me. The first was from Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer when I was in rabbinical school. She spoke about spending the High Holidays at her childhood synagogue counting the lightbulbs on the enormous chandelier that used to hang in this very sanctuary. Very relatable. Little did I know I would one day work here. 

The other was from Rabbi David Glickman, then at Shearith Israel in Dallas, who began a High Holiday sermon by thanking his congregation for the 54 days of sabbatical he had experienced that year. He took naps, learned, stayed present. We all loved that for him, until we remembered: he hadn’t taken a sabbatical. What was he talking about? 

There’s also a story told about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, walking slowly home late on a Friday afternoon. A student hurried past him, anxious about everything still to be done before Shabbat. “Rabbi, why aren’t you rushing? There’s still so much to finish.” 

Heschel replied, “I am not finishing my work before Shabbat. I am entering Shabbat before my work is finished.” 

I keep coming back to that idea: entering Shabbat before the work is finished. Because when is our work ever finished? When have you answered every email, solved every problem, cared for every person, completed every task, worried every worry? If the prerequisite for rest is that the work is finished, we will never rest. Torah knows this about us. And so Torah does not suggest Shabbat. Torah commands it. 

זָכוֹר אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ — Zachor et yom haShabbat l’kadsho. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” 

Not when it’s convenient. Not when the calendar clears. Every seventh day, whether we’re ready or not, Judaism tells us to stop. There is something incredibly powerful about belonging to a tradition that refuses to leave this decision entirely up to us, because left to ourselves, we’re not particularly good at stopping. 

We live in a culture that rewards the opposite: more productivity, more availability, more information, more consumption. We carry devices that allow anyone to reach us almost anywhere at almost any time, and then wonder why we feel as though we are never completely anywhere. We have confused accessibility with connection and activity with purpose. We have become extraordinarily good at filling time and increasingly unsure of how to sanctify it. 

Shabbat is Judaism’s answer, and Torah gives us two different reasons why. In Exodus, we read: כִּי שֵׁשֶׁת־יָמִים עָשָׂה ה׳ אֶת־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ… וַיָּנַח בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי. “For in six days God made heaven and earth…and rested on the seventh day.” 

God creates, and then God stops creating. Surely there was more God could have done. Creation was hardly perfect. There was still chaos to order and possibility to unfold. Yet God stops. 

The first thing Shabbat teaches us is that stopping is part of creation, not a failure of it. We are creatures, not machines. There are limits to our bodies, our attention, our energy, even our capacity to care. Torah places limits at the very center of creation and calls them holy. 

But when Moses repeats the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, Torah changes the explanation: וְזָכַרְתָּ כִּי־עֶבֶד הָיִיתָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם — V’zacharta ki eved hayita b’eretz Mitzrayim. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.” 

This time Shabbat has everything to do with freedom. A slave does not control their own time. Someone else decides when the work begins, when it ends, and what is enough. And so perhaps one of Torah’s most radical definitions of freedom is this: a free person can stop. That makes Shabbat more than rest. Shabbat is resistance. 

Every week, we declare that there are forces in this world that do not get unlimited claim upon us. Our jobs do not. Our possessions do not. Our phones do not. The news does not. Other people’s expectations do not. Even our own ambition does not. 

Pharaoh’s fundamental demand was: keep making bricks. Shabbat says: put the bricks down. Our personal Pharaohs rarely announce themselves as Pharaoh anymore. They arrive as opportunity, responsibility, productivity, urgency, even importance. They tell us that everything depends upon us and that stopping is somehow irresponsible. Judaism says otherwise. 

Isaiah takes us one step further. It’s not enough to refrain from work. Isaiah says: וְקָרָאתָ לַשַּׁבָּת עֹנֶג — V’karata laShabbat oneg. “Call Shabbat a delight.” 

How many of you came to at least one Shabbat on the Plaza? Wasn’t it delightful? Clearly, for us and for Jews everywhere, Shabbat requires that we do more than stop. It asks us to make room for something else. Maybe even Pickle Fest V. Or simply a conversation uninterrupted by a notification. A meal that isn’t rushed. Prayer. Singing. Walking outside and noticing what’s around you. Sitting beside another person without needing the interaction to accomplish anything. 

Shabbat asks: Who are you when you are not accomplishing something? During the week, the yachid, the individual, carries all sorts of roles: employee, parent, student, caregiver, leader. But Judaism never leaves us only with the yachid. Shabbat moves us toward yachad. 

We gather around tables and in sanctuaries. We sing in voices that sound better because they are joined to other voices. We linger at Kiddush. We walk. We talk. We notice the person we haven’t seen in a while. 

By creating time, Shabbat creates community. 

That feels especially important this year as we explore Yachid v’Yachad: Every “I” Strengthens Our “We.” We cannot build meaningful community entirely in the margins of overscheduled lives. Community requires time that is not optimized. It requires lingering. It requires showing up without immediately asking what comes next. 

So four times in this new year, we’ll try something together. We’ll spend all of Shabbat together. Instead of coming to services and immediately going home, we will pray, eat, learn, talk, play, walk, rest, and simply stay. 

Jewish communities have been doing this for thousands of years, so it shouldn’t feel revolutionary. And yet today, maybe it is. We’ve grown accustomed to treating time as something that must justify itself. Shabbat asks a different question: What did you experience? Whom did you encounter? What did you notice because, for once, you stayed? 

The rabbis of the Talmud teach in Berakhot that שַׁבָּת אֶחָד מִשִּׁשִּׁים לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא — Shabbat is one-sixtieth of the world to come. One-sixtieth isn’t much. The rabbis aren’t promising perfection every Saturday, probably because they understood Jewish families. They’re saying Shabbat gives us a taste: a world in which human worth is not determined by productivity, workers rest, families have time for one another, creation can breathe, and strangers become neighbors and neighbors become community. A world in which we put down our infinite-scroll machines and pick up each other. 

And this is where I think we sometimes misunderstand Shabbat. Shabbat is not a retreat from the world we’re obligated to repair. Shabbat is practice for the world we are obligated to create. 

We spend six days confronting what is broken. For one day, Judaism asks us to live, however imperfectly, as though wholeness were possible. Then we go back to work, responsibility, advocacy, caregiving, building, repairing. But hopefully we go back differently, because once we have tasted what the world could be, we become less willing to accept that the world as it is must remain that way. 

This is why I’m not making the case today that Shabbat is good self-care. Of course rest is good for us. I’m making a stronger claim: Shabbat is a Jewish obligation because without sacred limits, something essential in us is lost. We lose our ability to distinguish urgent from important. We lose time with the people we claim matter most. We lose connection to creation and community. Eventually, we can even lose ourselves. 

Judaism refuses to accept that as the price of living in the world. So it gives us Shabbat. Not when the work is finished. Right in the middle of the unfinished work. 

Which brings me back to Meta. After building technology designed to keep us scrolling, even Meta is now agreeing to limits: at certain times, for certain users, enough. Stop. Because continuing would not just be excessive. It would be harmful. Judaism has been insisting on this for thousands of years. Not because we’re children who can’t be trusted with our devices, but because we are human beings who sometimes need to be commanded to protect what matters most. 

And ten days from now, Judaism will command us to stop even more completely. Yom Kippur is שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן — Shabbat Shabbaton, the Sabbath of Sabbaths. For one day, almost everything falls away. Work. Food. Consumption. Distraction. We stand before God and one another and confront some basic questions: Who have I been? Who am I becoming? What deserves the finite time of my life? Perhaps weekly Shabbat is practice for answering those questions. 

And so this Rosh HaShanah, I want to ask each of us to do more than admire the idea of Shabbat. Keep some Shabbat. Choose one act of sacred rest and guard it. Light candles and let them mark an actual transition in your week. Put away your phone for a meal. Take a walk without earbuds and notice the world God created. Come here and pray. Stay for Kiddush. Join us for one of our four full Shabbatot and experience what happens when a community decides that being together is itself worth our time. 

It does not need to be everything. But let it be something. Because zachor, remember Shabbat, is not nostalgia. Shamor, guard Shabbat, is not quaint tradition. They are commandments about the kind of human beings we refuse to stop becoming. Six days a week, there will always be another brick to make. But on the seventh day, put the brick down. 

Remember that you are part of creation. Remember that you are free. Remember that other people are more than interruptions to your schedule. Remember that this world is more than something to consume. Remember that you are more than what you produce. 

And then, when Shabbat ends, pick up the work again, not because Pharaoh commands it, but because you have chosen what is worthy of your labor. For one day, taste the world as it might yet be. And then spend the other six helping to build it. 

Shanah tovah. 

Choices

Eve PosenLeave a comment

This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Saturday, September 5, 2026.

Choices, choices. Chocolate or vanilla. Window or aisle. There are some choices in life that are wonderfully easy. Stay up for one more episode or take the responsible action of going to bed. Ok, maybe that one isn’t quite so easy. 

But then there are the choices that actually shape our lives. I’m not talking about choosing between things that are obviously good and obviously evil. Those are rare. More often, it’s between two things we value. Do I speak up, knowing I might hurt someone, or stay quiet, knowing silence has a cost? Do I protect a relationship or hold firm to a principle? Do I choose what is comfortable now or what might create something meaningful later? The hardest choices are difficult precisely because there is something important on both sides. 

That is where we meet Moses this week in the combined portions of Nitzavim and Vayelech. Israel stands on the edge of the Promised Land, and Moses stands at the end of his life. He gathers the entire community and reminds them that Torah is not beyond their reach: “It is not in heaven.” It is close to us, “in your mouth and in your heart to do it.” And then comes one of Torah’s most famous declarations: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life.” 

Is it me, or is this the most obvious choice ever? Who would choose death over life? Who would choose curse over blessing? 

Well, the Torah could be asking a harder question. Not simply, “Do you want to live?” but, “What kind of life are you choosing to build?” 

Because we choose our lives incrementally. We build them through hundreds, maybe thousands, of decisions that may not feel monumental in the moment. We choose whether to show up. Whether to listen. Whether to forgive. Whether to apologize. Whether to make room for another person. Whether to stand by our values when doing so costs us something. 

And Vayelech reminds us that even Moses must make a painful choice. He cannot cross into the land. He must hand leadership to Joshua and trust that the story can continue without him at its center. Sometimes choosing life means holding on. Sometimes it means letting go. Sometimes it means recognizing that our responsibility is not to control the outcome, but to choose our next step with integrity. 

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, perhaps that is the invitation of Nitzavim-Vayelech. We are not being asked to make perfect choices. Life is far too complicated for that. We are being asked to make choices that add substance to our lives. 

So this week, don’t stop at “What do I want?” or “What is easiest?” Ask: Which choice helps me become the person I want to be? Which choice adds blessing? Which choice creates a life worth living? 

U’vacharta bachayim. Choose life. Again and again and again. 

Butterflies in the Sky

Eve PosenLeave a comment

This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Saturday, August 29, 2026.

There’s something extraordinary about giving a child a book. You hand them a stack of paper covered in words and pictures, and somehow you also hand them a world. A book can become a memory, a question, an identity, even a piece of who that child eventually becomes. And the remarkable thing is, the person who gives the book may never know the impact it had. 

When Dolly Parton departed our world this week, much was and will continue to be said about her music, her personality, and her enormous cultural legacy. But there’s another piece of her legacy that has had an unexpected and enormous impact on Jewish life. In 1995, inspired by her father, who could not read or write, Parton created the Imagination Library in her home county in Tennessee. The idea was wonderfully simple: every month, send a free book directly to young children, building not only literacy, but a culture of reading in their homes. 

When Imagination Library spread to other parts of the country, it was a Jewish philanthropist by the name of Harold Grinspoon who helped bring it to Western Massachusetts. Years later, Harold was at Pesach seder with his family and saw the joy on his grandchildren’s faces when they were handed gifts for finding the afikomen: Jewish picture books. Harold then had a very Jewish thought: What if we did what Imagination Library does, but with Jewish picture books? What if Jewish stories simply showed up in Jewish homes? In 2005, that inspiration became PJ Library. What began with a few hundred families in Western Massachusetts has grown into a worldwide Jewish literacy program, sending books filled with Jewish stories, values, holidays, traditions, and questions into hundreds of thousands of homes in 40 countries and 7 languages. 

In other words, Dolly Parton planted a seed. Harold Grinspoon recognized what might grow from it. And generations of Jewish children have been shaped by the fruit. 

Which makes it particularly fitting that we read Parshat Ki Tavo this week. 

As the Israelites prepare to enter the Promised Land, Moses gives them instructions for a future he himself will never experience. When they settle the land and bring their first fruits, they are commanded not simply to offer the fruit, but to tell the story: “Arami oved avi.” “My ancestor was a wandering Aramean.” They recount where they came from, what their ancestors endured, and how they arrived at this moment. 

Notice what Torah asks them to bring: fruit and story. Judaism understands that neither is enough by itself. What sustains a people is not simply what we grow, build, or accumulate. We survive because we tell the next generation where they came from and invite them to see themselves inside the story. 

There is a wonderful Talmudic story about Honi HaMe’agel, who sees an old man planting a carob tree that will not bear fruit for seventy years. Honi asks why he would plant something whose fruit he may never eat. The man responds that just as his ancestors planted for him, he plants for those who will come after him. In fact, there’s even a beautifully interpreted picture book version of this story in PJ Library’s lineup, written by Laurel Snyder called The Forever Garden. 

This is Ki Tavo. And perhaps that is the unexpected connection between Imagination Library and PJ Library too. We rarely know which seeds will take root. A book mailed to a child in East Tennessee inspires a Jewish philanthropist in Massachusetts. A Jewish book arrives in a home, sparks a question at bedtime, becomes a family ritual, and perhaps decades later that child reads a Jewish story to a child of their own. 

Our charge is to keep planting. Put the book in the child’s hands. Tell the family story. Sing the melody. Teach the blessing. Answer the question. Because Judaism has never survived merely by remembering the generations before us. Judaism survives when we give the next generation enough stories, enough roots, and enough imagination to write the next chapter themselves. 

Remember the Alamo

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This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Saturday, August 22, 2026

I was in San Antonio last Shabbat with my nieces and in-laws. And there was something there that I was supposed to remember, but for the life of me, I don’t know what I was supposed to remember.

I’m kidding; of course I remembered the Alamo. We made a special trip to take a photo in front of the iconic mission building so we would never forget the Alamo. Do you know how the city has made sure that no one ever forgets the Alamo? There are hundreds of businesses in San Antonio named after it.  

There’s Alamo Xtreme AC & Heating, Alamo Aquatic Pets, Alamo Area Beekeepers Association, Alamo Succulents. I imagine telling Davy Crockett, “Don’t worry, we remember the Alamo. We have Alamo Urology Associates to remind us.” 

The Torah portion is in here somewhere, I promise. There are weeks when Torah gives us one big idea to wrestle with. And then there is Ki Tetzei. 

Ki Tetzei contains 74 mitzvot, more commandments than any other parshah in the Torah. It can feel almost breathless: laws about family relationships, returning lost objects, building safe homes, paying workers on time, caring for the vulnerable, honest business practices, treatment of animals, and how we conduct ourselves even in war. 

It is as though Torah is saying: there is no part of human life exempt from the demands of being a decent human being. 

And then, after all those laws, Ki Tetzei ends with something entirely different: Zachor et asher asah lecha Amalek. “Remember the Amalek!” Well, sort of. It’s “Remember what Amalek did to you.” 

The Torah tells us that Amalek attacked the Israelites from behind, targeting kol hanecheshalim acharecha, those who were weakest, exhausted, and straggling behind. “Remember the Alamo” was about avenging the loss, but our rabbis take a different approach to remembering Amalek.  

Rashi, commenting on the word karcha, that Amalek “happened upon you,” suggests that Amalek represents a cooling of moral urgency. When human beings can look at suffering and become indifferent to it, that’s when Amalek enters. 

Perhaps that is why this reminder comes after 73 mitzvot. Ki Tetzei has spent an entire parshah teaching us that there is no arena of human life in which our moral obligations disappear. Not our homes. Not our businesses. Not our relationships with strangers. Remarkably, not even war. 

Earlier in the parshah, Torah commands that the military camp itself must remain kadosh, holy. Torah knows that war is messy and frightening, that human beings make impossible choices under impossible circumstances. And still it insists: even here, there are boundaries. Even here, human dignity matters.  

That is an enormously challenging teaching; the Torah asks us not to surrender our moral voice. Not only in global conflict, but in our local communities. When someone is demeaned, excluded, intimidated, or treated unfairly, our first question cannot be, “Whose side are they on?” It must be, “What does Torah require of me here?” 

Maybe that is why Ki Tetzei ends with Amalek. 

Amalek attacked hanecheshalim acharecha, those who were vulnerable and straggling behind. Torah commands us to remember because a sacred community is measured, in part, by what happens to the people who are easiest to overlook. 

Our charge, then, is not to have the perfect political analysis. It is to refuse moral indifference. To notice. To question. To speak when necessary. And perhaps hardest of all, to remain willing to examine our own camp with the same moral seriousness with which we examine everyone else’s. 

Seventy-four mitzvot remind us that holiness lives in the details. Amalek reminds us that holiness also requires courage. We remember, and in the remembering, may we have the courage to stand firmly for our beliefs while not losing the qualities that make us all human.